Dumb question time ...
Okay, both spaceships are traveling at very high velocity (v) and relatively close to each other (e.g., 200,000 km apart) and in the same direction. (What you said.)
If the communication is via some sort of beam it's likely that it is being sent to a specific (static) location (i.e., where Ship A was at Time X). My question/request for clarification is: how could any transmission beyond a certain length/duration reach either ship for more than a few milliseconds of time unless the communications being sent between the ships are greatly compacted when they are sent/exchanged. Basically: real-time to-and-fro comm's occur in bursts rather than along a continually open 'circuit' and the target/end-point (spacetime location) of the transmission is constantly being updated. Also, if either ship gets too close to a large gravity field (planet, black hole, star), the comms would have to be recalibrated to account for any gravitic distortion.
Most between-ship or planet-to-speeding-ship comms in SF are described as though the comm link is one never-ending unspooling continuous thread between the ships/ship & planet. Bizarre.
]]>Which is what makes it fun :) and is why I occasionally refer to my beloved's car as the SchwerGrossenGanzSchnellKinderTransportPanzer.
Other acts of mock-German from my mother include Bugelnberg (the ironing mountain) and of course, Marmaladenverkehrs... (traffic jam).
]]>Big difference is that the English approach results in a shorter hybrid word, e.g., 'breakfast' and 'lunch' becomes 'brunch'.
Looked up what brunch was in German - it's the same word and spelling (plus an article). So, it seems that tapeworm words occur mostly/only if the Germans are the first to coin an idea.
Hmmm ... anyone know whether pterry spoke German cuz this word coining approach reminds me of Leonardo da Quirm as in his 'going-under-the-water-safety-device'.
]]>A friend of mine once spent all day driving across Los Angeles. By the time she had to stop for sleep she was still in Los Angeles.
]]>We had a car like that, once.
Badoom, Tish, thankyou, I'll be here all week... the old ones are the best... etc...
]]>Any such mechanism would necessarily have to be something like quantum entanglement. It is believed that cannot be used to pass information, so 'something like' is the operational phrase. Yes, I am referring to things like space warps, ansibles etc.
]]>However, I've just used a route planner to double-check my figures, and from central London to Nottingham it gave ~126 miles and 3.5 hours leaving now. Gary lives in NE London which would take 30 minutes off that, and the route is almost all extra-urban freeway where a 70mph cruise should be possible, bringing the time down to more like 2 hours city to city. I'd suggest that spending 7 hours in near stationary traffic caused by a lorry fire on the other carriageway is cause for annoyance.
]]>I've been expecting SF authors to jump on Dark Energy (DE) as this decade's newest hand-wave to address FTL comms ever since DE was hypothesized as the culprit driving the ever increasing rate of expansion of the universe. If yes, then once physicists/engineers find and localize (trap) DE, it's a mere matter of figuring out how to compress or release DE as needed as the locomotive force for whatever missile/missive you want delivered at FTL speeds.
Would also be interesting if DE and Dark Matter had their own (different) set of quantum rules. Lots of job prospects for statisticians/mathematicians.
]]>Thanks for the link. I may look at his paper.
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